The Path
by kelsey01
Summary: Fifteen year old Dally returns home after six months in reform school. He comes back to a gang who want revenge, a father he can't avoid, and a teacher who thinks he can help.
1. Chapter 1

I wanted to write a one-shot of Dally in his younger days, but it turned into about 10 chapters.

* * *

It wasn't the first car he'd stolen, or the last, and not the tuffest either. It was a shitty old Buick with dented sides and cigarettes burns in the front seat.

He started it up right outside the house, in the driveway. He revved the engine, remembering the empty bottle tossed at him earlier that day, the shout from the Buick as it drove past him.

"Get off Brumly turf!"

Ronnie and Ricky King. Those boys didn't own more than one pair of shoes each, let alone an entire neighborhood.

The roar of the engine spilled over the quiet night, and he leaned out the window to throw a bottle as hard as he could toward the house. He was Dallas Winston, and he did what he wanted.

Later on, they wanted him to reflect. To pinpoint the moment his life had gone off track. As if there had ever been a time when it was following a straight and predictable path.

He could have told them there were no rails, no route. Life was like a river; it was a force that carried you forward. Fight to the top or drown.

But still, when he was back in his cell alone, it was that moment which stuck in his mind. The grey cloud of smoke from the exhaust rising into the darkness, the exploding glass, and Ronnie King running out of his house, barefoot and shirtless. As if at that moment the river had curved and he had followed the only path he could.

XXX

Dally was fifteen and he knew what it was like to come home from jail. He had done it once before, after his first stint in the reformatory.

But he had only done three months, that first time. When he went back up before the same judge less than twelve months later, the judge announced he hadn't learnt and sent him down for six months.

Six months was long enough to start to feel like forever, and two weeks after being out he still found himself staring over the shitty street outside his bedroom window as if it was some kind of paradise.

He still half expected someone to yell a warning when he reached through the metal slats of the blind to shove his window open. He stood for a moment, letting the warm breeze seep over him. It didn't help any.

The urge for a smoke was climbing in him but he had none. No money, no cigarettes. He curled his empty hands. He hadn't stolen a thing in two weeks.

He was free and yet still felt clamped in the suffocating rule of the reformatory. He headed out to the hallway and stopped. Down in the kitchen he could hear his dad moving about. Running water. Banging cupboards.

He pushed open the door to his dad's bedroom and slid in. The air was dusty and lifeless, as if no one had been in for months, and yet Dally could feel Karl's presence. His dad had never told him not to go in there, but some things didn't need to be said.

He glanced over the bare surfaces, then pulled open a drawer. He rummaged through tee shirts and socks.

There was an empty whiskey bottle, a half empty box of matches. Frustration seethed in him. He pulled open the draw underneath. He found a penny. Under a pile of tee shirts was a postcard with a faded picture of a sunset on the front. Los Angeles in a curving scrawl at the bottom.

He flipped it over. Marlena, he saw at the bottom. Everything seemed to still for a minute.

He remembered being so small his legs were swinging in the air as he sat on a chair, a blond woman putting a bowl of cereal down in front of him. She had said something, but then the memory slipped by, slipped away.

Some stomped down thing twisted in him as he looked at the name. There was a date at the top of the card. It had been sent five years ago, long enough for the colors to have leached out from the photo.

Long enough that the address was probably no more. Long enough that he had pushed her out of his mind and all but forgotten her. But still he took it.

In his room, the bed made up with sheets tucked in because he had gotten used to it like that, he slid the card into the gap between the mattress and the bed springs.

XXX

The sky was pale blue, pink at the horizon. Rob stood at the window with his coffee and watched it lighten.

"You should see the day out there," he said to Alice.

Then he let the curtain fall. He did his shirt up in the dim light of the bedroom.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Standing in the shadows, rumpled shirt, stubbled jaw. He was unprepared. He always would be now.

"Nothing to do but get on with it," he said to Alice. She was right beside him. He could feel her there.

XXX

Dally could feel his shirt pulling across his shoulders as he stood in the kitchen doorway. He'd grown some three inches since he'd been away.

He'd stood in front of the bathroom mirror and tugged on the t-shirt and figured it looked ok. Nothing he could do about the fat lip. His hair was still shaved short, but he didn't care about that. Everyone knew where he'd been.

His dad was leaning against the bench, coffee in one hand, cigarette hanging from his mouth.

"Waters hot there," he said, nodding his head at the kettle. "Why don't you make yourself a cup?"

Dally stayed in the doorway.

"I'm going to get going," he said.

He could feel his lip stretching open when he talked. He'd held a fist full of ice over it for a good ten minutes last night but it had still swollen up.

He didn't move an inch while his dad's gaze swept over him. Karl Winston had been a boxer in his day. It was no longer his day, but he still had that ready way of standing. He could still come at you quick as a snake. Because what you had once been, some part of you always was.

But Karl only shrugged. Flicked ash at the sink.

"Suit yourself. Don't be telling them in that school I don't feed you then."

"Coffee ain't food to most of us," Dally said. "But I'll take a smoke if you want to give me something."

Karl took the cigarette out of his mouth and coughed out a laugh.

"Didn't reform the smart ass out of you, boy."

It was too early in the day for things to have gotten on top of him. His eyes were clear as he stood there, his hair damp from the shower. The pain crept up as the day went on, then he drank, and he remembered what he tried to forget.

Dallas shrugged against the door frame. Ran a thumb down the peeling paint.

"They tried," he said.

The baton, the boot. He pushed the memories away.

"You'll be straight back in too if you don't wise up," Karl said.

"I don't care if I go back anyway," Dally said. He wasn't going back.

He turned to head down the short hallway to the front door.

"Dallas," Karl said.

He stopped. His dad stepped forward from the bench. Dally had grown, but not enough. Karl was a heavyweight, Dally a lightweight.

Karl dug in his pocket. He held a folded five dollar note toward Dally.

"Take it and get yourself something to eat."

Dally took it. He didn't say thanks, because nothing was ever free. You owed, or you were owed. Today he was owed.


	2. Chapter 2

Thanks for the reviews! Had to do a bit of googling to try and work out the US school year/grades. Sorry if I have anything wrong.

* * *

Dally lit up a cigarette outside the school gate. Damn it felt strange to be there. Starting tenth grade after spending the last part of ninth grade and all of summer in the reformatory.

His life felt back to front. Like some shitty joke with no punchline. What could school ever teach him that he was going to need?

He scowled and took a long drag from the cigarette. Spat the iron taste of blood at the ground.

"Asshole," he muttered, swiping a hand across his mouth.

"You want to quit talking to yourself, you'll get locked up in the nut house next time."

"I was talking to you, Shepard," Dally said, not bothering to turn around.

He tilted his head back and blew smoke at the sky. Being in school with Tim Shepard was all he needed. Tim leaned back on the fence and lit up a cigarette of his own.

"How was it?" Tim asked.

"You been in. What do you think?"

Tim squinted into the sun. It wasn't eight and already hot.

"You been laying low since you got back? I ain't seen you."

Dally smirked. "You been wanting to see me?"

"Sure," Tim said, in that smooth way he had. As if nothing on this earth could ever be significant enough to bother him. Although Dally knew better.

"You know where I live," Dally said.

He hadn't done much of anything since he'd been back. He'd gone out riding with Soda a few times, and racing across the dirt on the back of the horse there'd been a moment when he felt free.

But come seven in the evening he'd head back in time for curfew.

"Fuck probation," his mouth said, but his legs walked him home. Because he didn't want to go back. He could do many things, but he couldn't live in a cage.

"I just want to make sure you leave me your blade, when you make your will," Tim said.

Dally's blade was one he and Tim had both eyed up in the window of the store. Dally was the one who walked out with it, while Tim was still cruising the aisles trying not to look suspicious.

"Who says I'm dying?"

"Ronnie King, soon as he gets a hold of you."

"They crying over their shitty car I swiped?" he said. "If Ronnie King was half as good as he thinks he'd have had himself another before the day was done."

Despite himself he regretted it a little bit. Just a block from the King's house he'd blown through an intersection straight into the side of a cruising patrol car. That shitty Buick got him locked up for six months. But he couldn't say he wouldn't do it again, either.

"He's got another," Tim said. "Doesn't mean he's going to let it go."

"What are you now, his message boy?" Dally asked.

Tim kept giving him that even look. It made Dally want to keep poking until he managed to get him mad.

"If you'd been out on the streets in the last two weeks you'd know, it's no secret," Tim said. "You been hanging around horses instead."

Dally had never seen Tim go within ten metres of a horse. He was pretty sure Shepard was too scared to get on anything with a mind of its own.

"I been out two weeks and not one King brother has come near me," Dally said. "You might have to smarten up enough to steal your own blade."

Tim gave Dally an appraising look.

"I reckon my chances of getting yours are good," he said.

Dally looked over the school grounds, hazy looking in the early light, and anticipation churned in him. Ronnie King was twenty one and had spent more time in prison than school over the last few years, but the youngest King brother Colin was the same grade as Dally.

Colin wouldn't have been shit without his brothers to carry him, but if Ronnie told him to come after Dally he would.

Dally wasn't scared of any one of them. Guys who felt the need to go around in a gang were nothing on their own. He didn't need anyone to cling to.

"Sure you don't want in?" Tim asked him once. They'd been sitting on the side of the road together, bruised and bloody but triumphant. Dally had come by as Tim was getting jumped by a group of soc's, and stepped in to even the score.

"Consider this your initiation if you want," Tim had added. Rain had started to spit down on them from the heavy clouds, and Dally just about laughed at the thought of a world where he took orders from Tim Shepard.

"What for? It's just another prison," he said to Tim.

A gang was rules you were expected to abide by, someone demanding you did what they said, went where they wanted you. He would never understand why people chose to step into the cage.

"Mr Shepard."

Dally turned around along with Tim. A football player who had grown up and squeezed himself into a suit was standing there watching them.

"You best get yourself to class if you plan on lasting the week here," the man said.

Tim straightened, looking back at the man.

"We'll see who lasts longer," he said. "You want another go?"

Something in the man receded a little. Some authority.

"Now just listen a minute, Tim, …"

His sentence hung unfinished as Tim dropped his cigarette on the ground between them and strolled away.

The man stared after him. Then he looked to Dally.

"You going to put that cigarette out, kid?"

Dally took a last drag before flicking it away toward the gutter.

"I'm not on school grounds yet," Dally said, indicating the gate.

The teacher looked at the school then back at Dally.

"Since it's the first day I'll do you a favour. I won't ask your name. Don't let me catch you at this again or it'll be detention."

Dally bit down a smart reply about how much he cared about that. The threat of the reformatory was a noose around his neck, ready to tighten.

"You won't catch me," he said.

XXX

The sun streamed through the dinghy windows as the students filed in. There was a moment when each of them was haloed by light. Rob stood by the door, watching them come in, the golden glow rising and falling.

Sometimes he remembered why he went for teaching, when his football career died before it began. For the goodness he believed was in every one of them.

"Morning, take a seat, hello, good morning," he said at intervals, nodding a greeting in their general direction.

He had dreaded this day. The day the bills would wait no longer and he would emerge from the sodden cocoon of grief, some lumbering creature, and return to work.

It was four months since he'd lost it at the Shepard boy, and then walked straight to Glenn Wallace's office and told him what he'd done, and that he was quitting.

Glenn had persuaded him to take leave instead. We'll hold your job, he'd said. Glenn could have reported him, fired him. He'd done nothing. He'd been able to do nothing because it was Tim Shepard he'd punched, and not some other kid whose parents gave a shit.

It was two months since Glenn had sat on the porch steps outside his house with him and said, I'm sorry about Alice.

Alice. Her name softened like a whisper when people said it. Alice hadn't been able to talk at all in the end.

But now he was here and it was alright. It was like the moment when he got into his car after Alice was diagnosed, and even though it felt like the world was falling apart he still turned the key, slid the car into gear, stopped for the red lights.

Because life went on regardless, and your body remembered what to do.

He held up a hand and waited for the class to be seated and silence to fall.

Every year they were at once different and the same. The students who sat straight up front, and those who slouched in the back. There were the girls who stared at the boys and those who looked away. The boys who turned from trouble and those who ran toward it.

"Morning everyone," he said, pacing across the front of the desk. He had never liked sitting behind it.

"I'm Mr Connor, I'm your home room teacher. I'm also the gym teacher."

He waited a moment for the inevitable groans from those who hated gym class.

"Now, as I point to each of you I want you to tell me your name and something you did-"

The door slammed open. The sun had moved and the boy stood in shadow. The kid he'd caught smoking before school with Tim Shepard. He had fair hair buzzed off with no thought to style, a challenge in his stance.

"You're late," he said, as if the boy didn't already know it.

The boy stepped further into the class and let the door swing shut behind him. He made no apology.

"We were just about to introduce ourselves," Rob said. "How about you start? Your name and something you did over the summer."

The boy stared evenly at him. He didn't seem bothered by all the attention beaming on him

"Dallas Winston, and I went to Disneyland," he said.

A laugh went up from the class. Rob was bemused. He couldn't imagine the boy swaggering and smoking his way through people dressed up like Mickey Mouse.

"Was your favourite part riding the police car?" one of the slouching boys down the back asked.

Dallas gave a flicker of a smile.

"Nah, Colin, it was tossing a bottle through your window."

"Alright, take a seat now, Dallas," Rob said.

Tension was snapping in the air. Dallas and Colin eyeballing each other. Rob had been a teacher for eight years, and he could pick those bound for trouble the moment he saw them.

"Guess you got to take what fun you can get when your daddy's a washed up drunk," Colin replied.

Rob was moving before the words were all the way out of his mouth, but Dallas was faster.

He had a fist going for the kids face and Rob grabbed him around the collar at the same time as Colin ducked down into his desk.

Dallas hit thin air. He swung again and Rob tightened his arm around the boy's neck as much as he dared.

"Calm down now," he said.

"Let me go," Dallas hissed, struggling in his grip.

Instead Rob hooked his other arm across his shoulders and marched him toward the door. He was a six foot four ex football player and a fifteen year old boy was no match for him, not even a cursing and kicking one.

In the hallway he pushed Dallas against a wall and pinned there, his hands on the boy's shoulders.

"What are you thinking, you can't be doing that in school," Rob said.

He kept his voice low. No good yelling at a kid like that, who would only give back in spades what he got.

"You heard what he said," Dallas said.

He was breathing rapidly. Rage storming in him, as if he would explode the second Rob let go of him.

"Calm down," he said. "Take a deep breath now. Come on."

He drew one in himself, sucking it down so Dallas could hear. He waited and sure enough the boy followed suit, as if subconsciously. It was what he used to do to Alice, when pain or panic seized her. Just breath. Breath with me. Sometimes it was all he could do.

"That's better now," he said, feeling the tension in the boy's shoulders ease slightly. He loosened his grip a little. "He said your daddy's a drunk. Is that true?"

"Yeah," Dallas said, his tone defiant. "So what? Don't mean he can say it."

"Well he did say it, figured it would get you riled up, didn't he? And he was right."

Dallas scowled at him. Yanked away from him. Rob let him go. Now the boy felt like a bonfire extinguished, left smouldering.

"I let him get away with it they'll all think they can start," Dallas said.

He didn't specify who they all were, Rob could guess. A whole world he thought he had to fight. On the other side of the door Rob could hear restless noise rising up from the class. Another few minutes and the bell for the first class would ring out.

"You going to behave yourself when we go back in there?" he asked.

"Depends if anyone else wants to get me riled up. Like you say, it works."

Rob was getting a feeling riled up was his permanent state.

"Jesus, this is going to be a long year," he said.

Since Alice died the things he was only supposed to think just came out. Some barrier had fallen when she passed.

But Dallas only gave him a hard smile.

"Soon as my probation ends, I'll be gone," he said. "So it's only gonna be a long three months."

"What are you on probation for?"

Rob released he probably should have read through the notes he'd been handed.

"You got one to look out for in there," Glenn had told him.

"Car accident," Dallas replied. Not much of answer. He thought of the words traded between Dallas and Colin. Some bad blood he was going to have to spend the year containing, or the next three months at least.

"See you been in a fight already," he said, pointing to the boy's mouth. There was a deep and barely healing cut gouged into his bottom lip. A bruise spreading toward his chin.

Dallas stared at him. The temper that had burned in him turned to something cold.

"Wasn't on school grounds," he said.


	3. Chapter 3

Dally walked out of school. His tee shirt was damp with sweat at the back of his neck. The air felt thick with heat. He sucked down a breath of it, remembering the airless cell of the reformatory.

Tim Shepard was out in the parking lot, leaning up against the side of a beat up car like it made him some kind of king.

"Hey, Winston, you want a ride?" He banged a fist against the roof of the car.

"Watch out, you'll put a hole through that rust," Dally said. He sauntered over nevertheless. It was hotter than hell, and a car ride with Tim Shepard couldn't be worse than dying of heat stroke.

"You'll put another hole in your shoes walking home," Tim shot back.

Dally eyed the car as he came over. It couldn't be stolen if he was driving it up to school. Tim was too cautious to ever get caught like that.

"You pull this out of the Arkansas river, did you?" he asked.

"That's where you'll end up Dally. The bottom of the river."

"Piss off," Dally said. "Colin King's in my class and he ain't even come near me."

"Probably leaving that to his brothers, man," Tim said. Ricky the middle brother had some reputation. He was the brawn to Ronnie's brain. Colin was there by virtue of birth.

Tim got in behind the wheel and Dally dropped into the passenger seat. The cracked vinyl was hot through his jeans.

"What do you care if Brumly comes after me anyway?" he asked Tim. "Sure you not running errands for him? Shepard gang no more, huh?"

Tim tapped his fingers against the wheel. Dally wondered if it was a sign of annoyance. Usually the first anyone knew of Tim being mad was when he punched them in the face.

"Just think it's funny your hiding from him, that's all."

"I'm not fucking hiding."

Dally lit a cigarette and cranked the window down, irritated at Tim's words. He wondered if anyone really did think he was hiding.

"Maybe I'll go back out and steal Ronnie's new car," he said. "May as well make it something worth them trying to kill me over."

XXX

Rob lingered in the staffroom before heading home. From the window he could see over the school grounds. They'd mostly emptied out, but for the track team getting ready for practice, and a scattering of cars left in the carpark.

He heard the door swing open and close again behind him. Footsteps on the lino floor.

Glenn came over to stand beside him. He put his hands in his pockets and for a moment stood in silence beside him. It reminded Rob of Glenn sitting on the porch with him after the funeral. Most people didn't know how to just sit in silence. They felt the need to fill it up with something. Sorry, so sorry, they would say.

"Coffee, Rob?"

"You owe me something stronger than that," Rob replied.

Glenn raised his eyebrows.

"You met Dallas Winston I take it. Didn't know if the boy would show up."

"We have probation to thank for that apparently."

"Sorry for landing you with him. Figured you might have a chance of keeping him in line."

"I'm big enough to manhandle him you mean."

Glenn looked over at him sharply.

"He gave you any trouble today? I tell you if the kid so much as holds his pencil in the wrong hand send him straight to me. We'll have him out of here."

"He'll be back in the reformatory, we do that," Rob said.

"Best place for him," Glenn said.

"It's no place for any boy, you know that. They make monsters in there."

Rob watched the track team running on the spot. Knees pumping high.

"It's for the greater good," Glenn said. "Can't have him influencing the other boys." Glenn was a good principal, but he put the school ahead of any individual. Or maybe that was what made him good.

"He's keeping his nose clean so far," Rob said. He thought of holding the boy in the hallway, the fierce pride in him. The fleeting glimpse of pain he'd seen when he commented on his mouth.

"Hey, how about I get you that drink tonight?" Glenn offered.

Rob liked to drink alone these days. It was easier that way. But then he pictured the dark and silent house, the drawers full of clothes that would never be worn again, and he nodded.

XXX

"Dally, Johnny, are you two here for dinner?"

Dally was sitting on the arm of the couch, jiggling his legs impatiently while Soda and Johnny watched TV.

He was restless, frustrated. He wanted to be doing something else and it ached in him. He wanted to be walking into Brumly turf, looking for Ronnie King.

It was always better to be the one who did the hunting, never the hunted.

But time rolled on, and still he sat on the couch. He looked around at Mrs Curtis.

"Nah," he said. "I'm gonna go, I got something on."

He hated sitting at the table while they ate their family dinner. Even though he could smell whatever she had in the oven, and it was just about making him drool in his lap.

"I hope the only thing you have on is watching TV at home then, Dally," she said. "You don't need to be getting in any more trouble." She smiled at him, softening the words.

The worst part was she wasn't wrong either. He didn't have any plans other than heading home. Johnny ate there all the time and he didn't want to be lumped in with him. Some scared kid trying to avoid home.

But when he stood to go Johnny stood up too.

"I'll walk with you, Dal," he said.

XXX

Their cigarettes bobbed in the dark ahead of them as they walked. Johnny turned when a car engine whined behind them. He watched it pass.

"Someone you know?" Dally asked.

He was walking slowly. The night was warm and still. In the reformatory they always did rec during the day. He had missed this, being out at night. Being out while most people were inside. It made him feel more awake, more alive.

"Nah," Johnny said, glancing at him. "Just making sure." He stumbled over the words.

"Making sure what?" Dally asked.

"You know, them King boys being after you."

"Shoot, I'm not scared of them," Dally said. There was another car coming up, toward them this time. The headlights filling up his vision.

"You know Ricky just about killed somebody last year."

Dally scoffed at the words. People always said the only reason Ricky hadn't killed anyone was Ronnie, Ronnie was the only one who could control him. As if he were a guard dog Ronnie kept on a leash.

Dally thought the King brothers probably started most of the rumors about Ricky's murderous tendencies themselves.

"You know who got half killed?" he asked Johnny. "Ricky King did, and that was by Tim Shepard. So, I sure don't need to run from him."

"They'll be together, when they come after you."

Dally coughed out a mouthful of smoke. He took a choking breath and managed to get his words out.

"You saying you walked out here to protect me?" Johnny was fourteen and no bigger than twelve year old Ponyboy Curtis. He didn't even carry a blade around with him.

Johnny gave him a sideways glance. "To even up the fight, Dal."

Dally felt some weird thing rising up in his throat, a laugh he swallowed down. It made his eyes burn and he looked up at the stars, at the far off world.

Before he went away he'd gone out to Brumly turf with Tim Shepard. He didn't have any loyalty toward that bunch of no hopers Tim insisted on referring to as his gang, but he was bored and in the mood for a fight.

Dally hadn't even asked what they were fighting over, figured it to be some deal with one walking on the wrong street. Saying the wrong words to someone. He didn't care for a reason.

At some point during the fight he realized everyone had come to a stop, and all that was left was Tim Shepard straddling the prone body of Ricky, his fist slamming into his face again and again.

"Tim, stop," one of Shepard's own boys said. As if scared he was about to see a murder in front of his eyes. Just like a pansy that needed a gang to hang around with.

But then Dally heard the words Tim was spitting out as he delivered his beating.

"… you ever touch my brother again …" he said.

Tim's brother. A loudmouth kid desperate to be older, trailing around behind Tim like Tim was the second coming of Jesus.

And Tim was set to kill someone on his behalf. Dally found himself looking away then. Not because the sight of blood bothered him. It was seeing Tim's weakness, laid out before them all. Love was a thing that fucked you up.

XXX

The flickering black and white TV was all that lit up the lounge room. Dally stopped in the doorway, looking at his dad sprawled on the couch. He thought he was asleep, but then he turned his head.

"Early night again?" he asked.

"Yeah," Dally said.

"Turn the light on there," his dad said.

Dally flicked the lamp on, casting shadow across the room. Karl had a full ashtray and empty bottles on the coffee table.

"Come sit down," his dad said. "You keep out of trouble today?"

"Yeah," Dally said. He sat back against the couch, feeling tension squeezing in him.

He drew a breath, remembering that damn teacher in his face, ordering him to take a deep breath. He hated that it worked a little bit.

"You better be," Karl said. "You know what's coming you don't."

A crucifix hung around his neck. A remnant of his childhood, spent in a Catholic orphanage. Raised on fear of eternal hell and the strap. He told Dally tales of rows of beds and cold showers and vicious beatings.

"It was a hard life," he would say.

At sixteen he was turned out into the world. At eighteen he started climbing his way up through the amateur boxing ranks, and before he was thirty he suffered a concussion in an underground match that ended his fighting days.

Dally remembered watching his dad fight, blood on his knuckles, blood on the ground. Driving through the night. It would always be a hard life because Karl knew no other way.

Dally could feel him waiting as they sat on the couch beside each other.

"It's just school, nothing to it," he said.

He leaned his head back and stared at the TV. The ember of Karl's cigarette glowed in the ashtray. There were three empty beer bottles on the table, a half empty whisky bottle.

Dally knew his father's habits. Beer followed by a chaser. A light night then. Slightly drunk was usually worse than rolling drunk.

He sat forward and picked the lit cigarette out of the ashtray. Put it in his mouth and dragged on it, blew a smoke ring into the stale air.

A hint of a smile pulled the corner of Karl's mouth. "You trying to piss me off, boy?"

Dally stood up. Cigarette in his mouth.

"You're only letting it go to waste," he said.

He stubbed it out in the ashtray and turned and walked out. He felt the saw of tension swaying between them and he braced for the footsteps to come. He stood in the hallway and waited but there was nothing. Sometimes it reminded him of pushing on a loose tooth when he was a kid. That tender pain he couldn't stop poking at.


End file.
